From Here to There and Back Again: Allusion, Adaptation and Appropriation (Oct. 21-22 2010)

Keynote Speaker: Douglas Lanier, University of New Hampshire. Author of _Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture_ (2002)

The English Graduate Organization of the University of Florida invites papers from across the discipline(s) concerning textual adaptation or appropriation. Adaptation and appropriation, regarding questions of performance, translation, and occasionally plagiarism, concern both new and old media. The process of becoming or the process of naming a text are formulated on sometimes vague thresholds or border lines when one text becomes another.

Our conference will first and foremost seek to clarify the difference(s) of what we traditionally understand to be adaptation (the translating and remaking of one text into another through performance or rewriting) and intertextual appropriation (such as allusion, theft, plagiarism). In particular, we are seeking papers that query the blurring of the distinction between adaptation and appropriation after new media.

In particular, this topic can be used to discuss the political, aesthetic, or commercial value of texts. In regards to both performance and new (or old) media, this topic might also investigate how appropriation and adaptation affects issues of publication, typography, or illustration. We hope that this conference leads to a fruitful and stimulating contribution to the conversation of what constitutes a text, a work of art, a film, a novel, a play, or a performance. Papers could be either theoretically informed or could be extended close readings of specific examples or case studies.

Possible topics include but are not limited to: • Video game versions of film and vice versa • Shakespeare and film • Austen and film • Video games based on literature or the Bible (e.g. Dante's Inferno) • Comic book representations of art, literature, and film • Comic book to film to comic book • Television adaptations • Relationship of television to film • Children's literature adaptations (e.g. Where the Wild Things Are) • The use of new media in film • Treatment of various adapted authors: Stephen King, William Shakespeare, Alan Moore • Literary allusions in film, comic books, video games, etc. • Literary or filmic examples in philosophy (e.g. Badiou on Brecht, Zizek on Hitchcock, etc.) • Psychoanalysis: Freud's "The Moses of Michelangelo"; Lacan on Antigone; Jung and Gnosticism, etc. • Literary appropriations by political factions • Literary appropriations as protest • Film, literature, and new media on the campaign trail • "Movie Tie-ins" (book to film and back again) • Nonfiction books adapted to fiction film (e.g. He's Just Not That Into You or Mean Girls) • Press packet as paratext, adaptation, or appropriation • Advertising as appropriation

Please submit a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute presentation along with a short biography and contact information to ufl.ego@gmail.com by September 9, 2010. Please indicate any a/v requirements (DVD player and data projection available). Authors of accepted papers will be notified by September 23, 2010. For questions concerning the conference, please contact us at ufl.ego@gmail.com. For information on previous conferences, please check out our site: http://www.english.ufl.edu/ego.